by Ian Williams
77. BEANS
Heather
She kept telling Oliver to shut up because he talked nervously every time she had a contraction. He didn’t think it was happening. He thought it was the red beans, why did Felicia like cooking them so much if they just gave everybody gas. It’s early, isn’t it? I mean it’s getting late, it’s almost what time is it, it’s not time yet, try to sleep. So clueless. She got up and was chewing ice in front the open freezer door. She went downstairs to knock on Army’s door, Oliver tailing her, spouting theories, and Felicia
78. GOOD OL’ FELICIA
Felicia
took one look at Heather, sweating, sucking an ice cube, hair sticking to her forehead, the vibration in her eyes, top of her nightshirt wet, and told Army to call an ambulance.
Now, Army. Call an ambulance.
Oliver was jibberjabbering nonsense:
79. JIBBER JABBER
Oliver
Are you sure because we still have a couple of months before anything happens I mean something should happen first no there’s a sequence to these things you can’t just decide (the boy came out with his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants to hide his boner) and if this was it then you wouldn’t be able to walk your mother she was a mess she still is but you’re just take an aspirin and go to sleep and if the pain comes back in the morning we’ll go to the doctor to see what’s going on
80. WHAT’S GOING ON
Felicia
Felicia pulled Heather’s hair up and fastened it in a high ponytail atop her head. Then she took Heather by the upper arm and walked her up and down the hallway.
I want to sit down.
No, walk, walk.
Heather squeezed her eyes shut and grimaced. Her legs went slack and Felicia held her up.
Army, call an ambulance.
Mind your business, dammit, Oliver said and pried Felicia’s hands off Heather and looped his neck under Heather’s armpit for support.
Then Oliver looked around for his keys and Felicia knew where they were but did not bring them for him.
81. CURLERS
Army
If he think he can handle it, let him handle it, Felicia said. Is his child, not mine.
Army opened his eyes wider.
If we go, we not staying long. You have school in the morning.
It’s March Break.
Still. You finish reading Macbeth? I don’t see you reading anything.
Hurry up. Army held Felicia’s keys while putting on his boots. She was taking out her curlers.
He want act like a big man, Felicia said, let him take care of his daughter if that is how he want to get on.
Army started taking out her curlers but she pulled her head away. Then he dropped a scarf on her head and pushed her by the shoulders to the front door, like a snowplough.
The minute they were in the Brampton hospital parking lot, he opened the car door and ran to the entrance. Felicia called after him.
82. TRACK
Felicia
She had a good mind to sit in the car and remove the rest of her curlers but the boy bolted, so she followed him with her hair covered, half in curlers, half out, praying she didn’t see anybody from work or church.
She could see Army in the light beyond the automatic doors, looking both ways before running left.
83. SQUATS
Oliver
Heather banged on the dashboard, on the seat, on the handles. She gripped the handbrake and pulled it up. At a red light she ordered him to go. She elbowed the door. She took off her seat belt and leaned forward.
There was a sound like a wet fart and then Heather looked down at her thighs.
Then she raked her hands in her hair in aggravation.
Oliver pulled over to the shoulder.
Just drive, Dad, what are you doing?
But his truck, the seat, maybe she could do some of that outside, not that his truck was important right now but maybe she could just—
I’m not having the baby in the woods.
Of course not. I— Don’t you want to, like, squat it out? Make sure you get it all out. I don’t know. I’m trying to help you, Heather.
Heather screamed and whipped her head from side to side until Oliver pulled off the shoulder and sped the rest of the way to the hospital.
84. WRONG
Army
Army couldn’t find Heather or Oliver in Emergency and he couldn’t just walk to the back.
The receptionist checked her computer. No Heather Soares had been admitted.
What about Oliver Soares? Army asked. He’s the dad. Not the dad-dad, but her dad.
The triage nurse shook her head. Sorry. Are you sure you’re at the right hospital?
85. A PLAGUE OF DIVORCE
Felicia
Of course. Oliver had refused the Brampton hospital after Felicia told him about a series of deaths from a meningococcal outbreak. Four children in all who were there for other longterm but treatable illnesses until beds opened up at Sick Kids ended up dying because of their parents’ postal code.
86. HEADING BACK HOME
Felicia
She had taken Army back home once when he was nine. It was for her father’s funeral. It was the only time Army had been on an airplane. He kept watching the gate to see the pilot then he turned to her when they crossed with their black wheelbags, holding coffee, laughing with the stewardesses, he turned to her but did not say anything.
87. THE SMALL UNRECOGNIZED ISLAND
Felicia
was largely unrecognizable in the capital and around the coast. In the eleven years she had been gone, Germans had come over and bought up the beachfront property, built hotels and casinos and docked their cruise ships nearby like goats tied to a tree.
In her village people cursed the Germans for taking over and Felicia joined in. They knew everything about Germans, down to the way they held cups for their mothers to spit blood into. The islandfolk cursed their government for selling them into slavery, although some were happy their children could get jobs at the hotels. They talked a lot about the sagging triceps of German women.
88. WHITES ONLY
Felicia
Felicia tried to take Army to the beach although her sisters told her the beach was now private. She went. Sure enough, one of her own people, a boy she went to school with came out and said she couldn’t use the beach but he was friendly, how you doing, you looking nice, and so on. When Army asked if he could use the swimming pool, he said, Go ahead. Felicia went after him but her schoolmate clarified, Because he’s a child.
A white child? Felicia said.
Unashamed, the mate said, He go fit in.
Felicia called for Army and went back up the hill to the village.
89. REROUTED TO ST. XAVIER, FELICIA SENT EDGAR TELEPATHIC MESSAGES
Felicia
Not once did you tame a baby’s wild foot with a sock.
90. BY MYSELF
Felicia
I lined my eyes and lips carefully that day.
I dressed my irresistible in a snowsuit and hat. It was -24 degrees Celsius with the windchill.
I curled an S in the front of his hair with baby oil.
I bought everything with my own money.
I lifted the stroller on and off the bus in the winter as you looped your Passat to and from the airport.
91. BY OURSELVES
Felicia
We waited on your porch for a door to open.
I bounced Army on your unshovelled porch and stared at the door.
92. BY YOURSELF
Felicia
You were in Calgary. You were in Geneva. You were in New York. You were in heaven because it was closer for your airplane.
93. BY MYSELF AGAIN
Felicia
When it was clear that you were not home or would not answer the door, I looked up and down the street to see who saw us. Then I lowered Army back into the stroller and pushed it, with its one trick wheel, through dough.
> I did all of this while you ambled around the world, shaking hands, men’s hands.
94. THE USE OF DICTIONARIES IS PERMITTED DURING THE EXAM
Felicia
When I lay the child down on the bed and unzipped his snowsuit, he looked up at me the exact same way as when I had zipped up his snowsuit, although you or I had failed him since then.
A baby teaches you the meaning of the word regardless.
95. CRY
Felicia
Three months in, the child was supposed to drink two ounces of breast milk every three hours, but he drank four. He would not refuse her. He cried when he was gassy, or alone. He cried when he was sleepy and she’d pace the hallway with him, his ear feeling for her heart. He might cry when he needed to be changed or he might lie in his own feces smiling. She saw how other babies clenched their fists during bowel movements but Army always had soft hands that reminded her of a pigeon.
He smiled when he was smiled at. It was remarkable. Without any words, he kept talking to her. He said, Hey pretty lady, you’re back. I thought you were gone forever. Don’t go again. He said, Can we do that thing where I look at your face and you open your eyes really wide or that thing where you make all those sounds with your mouth? That’s amazing. Or the one where you hold me against your chest—you so warm, lady—and breathe oceans until I fall asleep. How are your breaths so big? Haha, he said, you thought I said something else.
She studied Army as he slept. He slumped to his right if he fell asleep in his swing. He curled to the right in his crib. It was a good sign, her mother would have said. When he was about to wake up, he covered his eyes with his pigeon hands and kicked out his legs. Then she’d pick him up and he’d blink slowly and stick out his bum in her arms. Yeah, yeah, pretty lady. I’ll be right with you.
96. BY OURSELVES AGAIN
Felicia
Felicia realized that after having Army, she’d never be alone again. Always a question about the baby. Who would watch him? Was he sleeping? Even a few years ago, when she worked at a post office inside a convenience store and had no one to watch him, she left him in the arcade next door, bleeding quarters from her. It was the cost of childcare.
97. HIGHWAY
Army
Do you want me to drive, Mom? Because you’re only going, like, a hundred, Army said.
He wasn’t sixteen yet, but he had already studied the Ministry of Transportation’s driving handbook and cozied up to Oliver for shared use of the truck.
I’m going the speed limit, Felicia said.
It’s the middle of the night. The road’s clear.
Are you gonna pay the ticket?
And the speed limit doesn’t apply if you’re in an emergency situation.
Felicia didn’t accelerate. Army rewound the mixtape to a seventies song and turned up the volume a touch and then Felicia sped up gradually so he wouldn’t think it was because of him.
98. EVIDENCE
Felicia
Army did not resemble Felicia or Edgar in the watery way resemblances usually work. Instead, in the right light his face leapt forward exactly as Edgar’s or as hers or in less light as her mother’s or in darkness as Mutter’s.
And one day when she picked him up from preschool, she found him gripping his wrists, like an ouroboros, his face set like Edgar’s when he needed a cigarette.
Why are you standing like that?
Like what?
Like that.
He released his wrists and shrugged. You’re late.
She wondered if she might have transmitted the gesture to Army unwittingly but she had never known herself to hold her wrists that way. From which gene is the adjusted figleaf position expressed?
99. EVIDENCE OF A SORT
Felicia
Fifteen gifts Edgar sent the boy last summer and not so much as a mint for Felicia.
In the car, she couldn’t bear to see how carefully Army handled the tape, like an heirloom, how gently he turned the volume knob.
What about her daily work, meal after meal, day after day for fifteen years? What about the constant enforcement of nutrition, the presentation of growing portions as he pulled in his chair year after year?
Army still ate absentmindedly, like a child, without a thought of where his food came from. But he was starting to sit and eat absentmindedly, like a man, with his mind elsewhere, on money.
100. MONEYMONEYMONEYMONEY! MONEY!
Felicia
What was it with these modern men and money? Felicia’s father provided for eight of them without curbside trash or customized stationery. He set out in the morning and came home in the evening with fresh blessings by the day. So-and-so sent you some breadfruit, so-and-so say she lime tree bearing real nice, and her mother, before she migrated to become a domestic, would accept the Lord’s provisions and lay them on the counter.
101. RESPONSIBLE
Felicia
In those days, Army may have been her sole responsibility but she was not solely responsible for him.
102. RESPONSIBLE MEN
Felicia
At the end of last summer, Felicia came home and found her son in a cast upstairs on Oliver’s couch, the black door busted open.
I heard a crash in the garage, Oliver said, but the garage door was jammed and so I had to break down the black door to get to him.
He carried me up the stairs, Army said. Like one of them brides over the threshold.
103. EXIT
Army
Are you worried the baby’s gonna die? Army asked. Felicia was driving as if she was falling asleep.
When are you going to Casa Loma? was Felicia’s response. Did I sign that permission form?
I signed it for you. He could have lied but he could tell Felicia was in no mood to ride a high horse. I took the initiative, you know.
What about the money?
Well, you still have to pay twenty dollars. She looked over at him. Life and death are in the hands of God, she said.
So you think the baby’s going to— Army hanged himself with an imaginary rope.
I don’t know.
I’ll bet you twenty the baby’s gonna live. Twenty bucks on life. Come on, come on.
104. PROPOSITION
Felicia
Felicia did not accept Edgar’s proposition to have another child. Nor did she not not accept it. She laid down two conditions to test his seriousness. He negotiated hard.
Why didn’t he come with that nonsense eight, nine years ago when the boy was asking for a brother? And even then, she— Who knows what she would have done at the time for a roof of her own?
If he backed out of his sacred paternal duty once, he was capable of backing out again. Simple. But this time, Felicia would place her arms around the shoulders of her children, and she and her two boys (boys surely, though everybody needed sisters) would watch him drift away from their desert island. The three of them would look dangerous, as Army would say, their limbs agloss with Vaseline, a terrible serenity on their faces as his raft floated down a river of fire toward a cave. It was a vivid image in her mind. Edgar would be wearing cutoffs and his shirt would be in tatters. All beige.
105. THE SECOND
Edgar
She told him the first condition, which he reasoned was preposterous, and she got huffy and wouldn’t tell him the second.
106. THIS IS NOT DENIAL
Edgar
One of Felicia’s conditions was that he give up smoking.
His objection to that demand, as he explained it to her, had nothing to do with smoking itself but with the penance she expected him to pay. He pointed out that he did not even smoke a pack a day. He did not go broke buying cigarettes. Was smoking a problem if one could afford it? Did one have a cocaine problem if one could snort one’s way through the Alps? The real problem behind drug addiction was poverty. Ergo Latin, Latin, Latin.
Since she was so interested in the subject, he told her that nicotine was a naturally occurring compound that had
a number of health benefits unmentioned by the anti-tobacco propagandists. He could name ten right now if he wanted to. But that was beside the point.
Until she could understand his principled convictions against not smoking, he would not be yielding to that condition, no. Smoking was no different from making a phone call several times a day to someone you loved. Cogito veni vidi vino e pluribus de facto rasa in vitro veritas et cetera.
Remember I used to call you from work? he said.
Then Felicia got a soft look in her eyes, exactly what he wanted, yet he regretted the reminder and began talking about the candy cigarettes he and his brother pretended to smoke in their childhood.
107. NEITHER IS THIS
Edgar
He could stop any time.
He knew that sounded like the talk of a chronic smoker. But a non-smoker would say the same. So ho-ho.
In total control. And, purely hypothetically, even if he wasn’t in control, so what? Was he in control of his breathing or his swallowing?
His relationship to cigarettes was just an autonomic bodily function she’d have to get used to again.
108. NOR THIS
Edgar
In the last few months before he went on leave from Paperplane, he had begun to break longer flights into multiple segments so that he could stretch his legs outside the terminal in the fresh air.
In advanced societies like Germany you could still buy cigarettes from vending machines.
109. DRUNKARD
Edgar
That was Felicia’s word.
The drinking didn’t seem to bother her as much, though. If he asked her to pick one—I either give up drinking or smoking—she’d pick smoking, which would be the greater sacrifice as he was not what people call a big drinker. He was a social drinker. Who drank only on special occasions. Which he usually celebrated alone.